Hit/Shit List 2004

(The bummer first -- I failed to mention the i-Pod, Michael Moore's docu Fahrenheit 9/11, the mainstreaming of celfones with cams, and those ugly rubber wristbands. Yeah, FPJ's death and the Indian Ocean/Asian tsunami, too, but note the date I wrote this down.)

If you happen to belong to a doomsday cult that’s been awaiting the end times since birth, rejoice! The end of the world just happened in 2004, the year of the green monkey. It didn’t turn out to be a cataclysmic big bang, though, but a long-drawn-out affair, 365 days in the making to be exact.

Among the milestones of the end times was the official deletion of the word 'originality' in Webster’s. In the few areas where originality soldiered on, however, and gave faint hopes of renaissance, it turned out to be such a bad joke. Or monkey business, you could say.

As if to drive home the point – Goodbye, originality. Hello, monkey business – the year was punctuated by the passing on of certain firebrands and spearheads of the world. Let me just mention one: The demise of 'tropical (gothic?) baroque' writer Nick Joaquin in April which orphaned Philippine literature. Well, we can look at it as one man’s leaving behind a legacy we can all be very proud of.

Nevertheless, it is this doomsday deletion that proved right on the money. It was the major clones that unabashedly gave birth to just about every new showbiz career in town -- reality TV clones, British Idol clones (complete with self-replicating Simon Cowells), Fear Factor clones, Punk'd clones, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and similar outings, celebrity challenge clones...

Having originality as major criterion therefore cuts both ways. Original can mean excellent but it can also mean icky. I've always been loathe to make a top 10 “hit/shit list,” convinced that life is a complex greyscale and all about human error, but I am constrained to see the year 2004 through the lens of originality and copycat-hood -- who gave in to aping whom and who stood valiantly in defiance, even with catastrophically comic result? I leave the final judgment to the reader as to who was admirably valiant and who was plain ridiculous.

New talents or public scandals? (Entertainment in general)

Among the trends that emerged fresh from the bakeshop were Pinoy novelty songs, primarily those written out of thin air by the naughty Lito Camo. One can only have grudging admiration for this guy, or more specifically his bank account, who could be held (ir)responsible for such enjoyable atrocities spewing off the mouth of babes (Viva Hot), among other bombshells, to sell like pirated hotcakes. Channel 23’s Wazzup Wazzup dished out jokes that were actually funny, featured fresh talents, and peddled quite original concepts.

Switching nationalities (Local TV)

Presumably, the ‘fantaserye’ plumbed the depths of our rich tradition of magic and legends and came up with a viable alternative to the Korean soap invasion. Having made this citation, though, it’s the, uh, kimchinovela that made the greater dent on primetime TV. The popularity of the Taiwanese quartet F4 found continuity in their local spin-offs, too. Striking was Hero Angeles' resemblance, or at least his ectomorphic build and hairstyle, to Vic Zhou’s and so were Sandara Park’s to Chan Cai’s features. Sandara Park was a phenomenon all by herself. Filipinos have no tradition of falling in love with Koreans with no talents, save perhaps when they come spiced with kimchi, only going to war against them. Pirated Korean movies and Korean telenovelas all but expunged their Taiwanese and Mexican counterparts, which in 2004 were practically relegated to the realm of memoirs, as compared to an erstwhile ubiquity that bordered on being public nuisance.


Slim pickings (Music, non-novelty department)

2004 pronounced sudden death to the boy band which gave way to acoustic sound, solo r-n-b acts, and punk rock and hip-hop groups. An unknown rap act in Cebu takes Manila by storm with a catchy Nihonggo chorus. Other apparent winners in the originality department include Akafellas, South Border, Gladys and the Boxers (since disbanded), Outkast, Jason Mraz. Meanwhile, a guy named William Hung, a reality show by-product, may be included in the roster as being original in his own right.

Personal belief peddled and sold well (Movies)

Passion of the Christ was no doubt 2004's biggest filmic controversy, with opposite sides of the Mel Gibson ‘opus’ controversy accusing Gibson of, or railing against claims of, anti-Semitism. Going by genres, Asian horror flicks won over like SARS epidemic, reducing the Hollywood horror show into a scarecrow. Another unexpected work to take local audiences by storm was Imelda, a historical documentary by Fil-Am filmmaker Ramona Diaz. Surely the success of these works was the happy payoff of coupling originality with hard work?

Politics as bad joke (National politics)

2004 also witnessed the unprecedented apparition of someone no doubt original: Eddie Gil, the presidential candidate who defied all pompadoured political logic and incredulity, even minus a possible teenage romance with fortune-teller Madame Auring, herself a controversial apparition. It made us think: Actor-turned-presidential candidate FPJ (Fernando Poe Jr.) was being disqualified in the face of an Eddie Gil running?! Duh!

Blogging as official hobby (Cyberlife)

Bloggers were taken seriously for the first time by mainstream US media when their candid, uncensored accounts came in handy during the US primaries. At home, one has to sift through a flood of perfectly useless content first before stumbling into something worthy of being called indie media. Far from being a foretaste of democratized publication, blogging here remained a self-indulgent infliction and shall remain so until a critical mass of informed population finds a miracle called fast-and-affordable-Internet-access. At least a kind of grouping seemed to brew, enabling all bloggers to be one degree of Kevin Bacon away, i.e., just one clickable link apart, from each other. It's still in cell phone "texting"/SMS where information sharing and dissemination was truly democratized.

Meanwhile, sex chats, gay and bi- sex EBs (eyeballs), Internet porn, the Paris Hilton video, coupled with Keana Reeves’ revelations on the ‘sexcourt’ service cottage industry, became a wee bit commonplace.

In online gaming, Ragnarok further cemented its position as the PC game of choice by young addicts, as though to rub into our consciousness the ubiquity of things Korean.


So what else is new? (Fashion)

It was also the year of the Von Dutch and trucker caps for men, bulky chandelier earrings for women, and reintroduced brands and resurrected designs (Adidas, Fila, Nike, Puma, etc.) for all.

Japanese anime and its culture of cute continued to reign supreme not only on primetime TV but also in young men’s hairstyle, which competed with the bald head, the asteroid-sized rock earring, and other blindingly vulgar bling-blings of hiphop and the faux mohawk of punk rock. For the early part of the year, plain janes and plaids bowed out to prints and jarring geometric lines and no two designs were meant to be alike, a clear backlash against the horrific boredom of uniformity, if there ever was one. Original move? I really can’t tell; I wasn’t born in the 60s. I’m only reminded of Oscar Wilde’s supposed sartorial advice which masqueraded as a bad joke: “Fashion is an ever-changing form of ugliness!” Nevertheless, a girl from Cebu named Kate Torralba and her much-applauded kikay kit (sense of feminine style, hehe) looked original to me.

Food as medicine (Food)

It’s the bad consequence of eating that got our attention instead, thus the inroad into public consciousness made by the no-carb South Beach diet, noticeably erasing the other well-known dieting techniques because it was meant for those who loved to stuff themselves. Then there was the increased orders placed for virgin coconut oil, 2004’s foremost panacea. Oh, but that’s more of medication than food, is it not? Verily, food was increasingly seen as medicine, if not an agent of death and disease.

Bandwagon effect? (Sport)

Badminton maintained its grip (foothold?) on local sports buffs, thanks a lot perhaps to media mileage via corporate sponsorship and the strongest, most reliable advertising campaign ever: word of mouth. Meanwhile, the Olympics "went home" to Athens, Greece, a place of so many things fundamental and therefore original, but sadly one hounded by illegal drugs.

“Chick lit” as literature (Books)

The howling success of epic and heroic quest movies the year before, which continued with the last installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the third Harry Potter film, may have shifted readers' appetite to the classics, but it's largely the "chick lit" that made Warholian waves both in international and domestic fronts. So successful was it that the creation of a corresponding "dick lit" could only be inevitable. Deliberate anti-intellectualism? Massive dumbing down of the masses? Or originality at its death throes?

Speaking of new genres, the “historical fiction” Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown kept booklovers riveted, too, even as they may have gotten the facts and their faith confused with fiction.

Life of impersonation (Nightlife/-scene)

People went to coffee shops to chat and have some coffee, to bars to watch and listen to live music, then to videoke bars to imitate singers or fake one’s talent, or to comedy clubs to watch stand-up comics or drag queens do both. Teri Onor's removable nunal I found quite strangely original considering the apparent intent to copy, spoof, or cut-n-paste somebody else’s mug.

New jobs, feigned accents (Job market)

Call centers and other business process outsource firms provided much-needed jobs by the tens of thousands, and necessitated young Filipinos to brush up on their English and knowledge of American geography and to think like Americans, aside from readjusting their circadian rhythm. There was an exodus of nurses and doctors and a sizeable number of doctors switched to nursing. Other professions scrambled to the general direction of caregiving as alternative career option.


Tiring rehash of the apocalypse

Near bankruptcy as a novel crime (National economy)

Price hikes, new taxes, budget deficits, fiscal crisis – these were unkindest cut of all because they were supposed to be soo last millennium.

Horrifyingly original suicide attempt (Crime)

That a man jumped off a footbridge would've been ho-hum news if he didn't carry with him his one-year-old son, who died while his father, the bastard, survived. How more original can you get, huh?

Rehash of apocalypse (World events)

In other news, 9/11 appears to have spawned more of such attacks around the world (Bali, Madrid, Beslan in Russia). Most heart-wrenching of all was the massacre of Russian schoolchildren by Chechen separatists in September.

In Palestine, a wall was set up a la Berlin post-WW2 ostensibly to keep out terrorist attacks against Israel. Yes, even as nations all over Europe resolved to be under one national anthem and monetary unit, the euro.

9.15.2004
published in Fudge Jan. 2005